


afterwards

by acacias



Series: feather and scale [3]
Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Biting, Blood, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Interspecies Relationship(s), Marking, Porn with Feelings, Tender Sex, Weird Biology, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:35:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28480263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acacias/pseuds/acacias
Summary: “I’ve missed you,” Revali says, and Mipha laughs, takes her hands from his braids.“Show me,” she whispers, pressing closer to him, one hand moving to the nape of his neck while the other strokes the underside of his beak, and what else can he do but obey?after the calamity's end, a reunion.[ mipha/revali ]
Relationships: Mipha/Revali (Legend of Zelda)
Series: feather and scale [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2095758
Comments: 10
Kudos: 45
Collections: LoZ Writers' New Year Exchange 2021





	afterwards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unavoidablekoishi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unavoidablekoishi/gifts).



> botw (not aoc) timeline; au where the calamity was sealed successfully first time round.
> 
> betaed as always by [sun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sturms_sun_shattered/pseuds/sturms_sun_shattered), who i am grateful to know. ♥

Revali hadn’t expected to live.

Truthfully, he hadn’t expected victory over the Calamity at all, hadn’t dared hope for it - or, if he had, he’d imagined it would come at the cost of his and the other Champions’ lives. That they should buy time for Zelda’s sealing power to awaken and sacrifice themselves in the process had seemed the best outcome that could realistically be aspired to, anything more than that an impossibility; so convinced had he been of this that when the field on which they faced the Calamity had flooded with searing light he’d barely understood what was happening, and in the aftermath - watching through Vah Medoh’s eyes as Vah Ruta knelt and Mipha sprinted from the Divine Beast to throw her arms around Link and Zelda - he’d turned Medoh around, feeling somehow unable to join them.

Still fighting to process their victory, he departed for home.

Which is where he remains six weeks later, attempting, in the absence of any clear idea of what to do with a future he hadn’t planned for, to simply pick up where he left off, telling himself and anyone who asks that his part in ending the Calamity is no more than an unforeseen interruption in the settled course of his life; that it changes nothing, has changed nothing.

Late one afternoon, Revali rides the warm updrafts rising from the Flight Range basin from one target to the next, the advancing hour and the weather having persuaded all but himself to return to the village - or at any rate almost all; for reasons he can’t quite discern four or five newly fledged warriors remain out here with him, doing their best despite the wind and snow.

Perhaps they’re trying to impress him. Unfortunately for the novices and for Revali, his mind is elsewhere, his thoughts turning inevitably to the same subject it seems he is bound to return to whenever he fails to adequately distract himself: namely, Mipha, and the unexpected intimacy they’d fallen into with one another.

Mipha catching his unguarded flank on the points of her trident during one of their sparring sessions and mending the slight damage afterwards, her eyes on his as her fingertips brushed over the wound and it closed under them. Mipha’s smile, full of sharp teeth, strange and beautiful, and her laugh, a sweet, melodious chime. Mipha’s hands, her mouth.

Mipha’s face at the moment of the Calamity’s awakening, devastated and hopeful as she’d reached for Revali’s hand.

(“Don’t,” Revali had pleaded when she’d opened her mouth to speak, afraid she was about to put a name to whatever there was between them and afraid he wouldn’t be able to bear it. Mipha’s expression had wavered between hurt and understanding for a moment before she’d taken both of his hands in both of hers and said, instead, “Be safe,” - and Revali, unable to speak, had freed one hand from hers to brush his primaries against her cheek before taking to the air, bound for Hebra and Vah Medoh.)

Why couldn’t he have let her say it? Why couldn’t _he_? Would it have killed him, when he’d been certain they were going to their deaths in any case, to admit -

\- and one of the novices calls on him to advise them on their form, and he goes willingly, grateful for the distraction, afterwards returning to his own training, and his thoughts to Mipha despite his best efforts, his arrows seeming to land further and further from the centre of each target he takes aim at.

Does she think of him? Would she look at him now, if they were to meet again as strangers? Hardly likely; whatever there had been between them had started on the battlefield, after all, the two of them thrown together by strange circumstance, and it was only natural that it should have ended there also - and their victory over the Calamity must have been as much a surprise to Mipha as it was to Revali, and he can’t imagine her plans for the future she has unexpectedly been gifted with include him; not when she has the welfare of an entire kingdom to consider.

Perhaps, in staying silent that day, he’d done her a favour, then.

Revali misses his next target entirely, his arrow glancing off the rock face and falling to the icy waters below.

Returning with a cry of frustration to the edge of the basin, thinking to go back to the village after all, he lands a short distance from the Flight Range lodge - and as he bends to pick up an arrow fallen in the snow at his feet he sees, out of the corner of his eye, a sudden flurry of energetic movement amongst the novices, catching _Mipha_ and _Zora Champion_ in their excited chatter.

Revali startles, almost letting the arrow in his hand fall back into the snow, and straightens abruptly to see Mipha standing maybe ten paces away and the novices clustered around her, talking over one another, questioning her about the sealing of the Calamity and demanding she dive into Lake Totori from the cliffside for their entertainment.

“Later,” she promises, giving Revali a half-amused, half-apologetic look as he approaches, his expression unreadable and his wings folded across his chest in a manner that makes him appear as though he’s trying to shield himself from something. “But I had hoped to speak to Master Revali, if you don’t mind -”

“I believe Champion Mipha meant _alone_ ,” Revali adds dryly, and when the words appear to have no discernible effect, the novices falling gradually silent and turning away from Mipha to face Revali but making no move to depart, he takes another step towards them, shooing them with a flap of his wings.

“Leave!” he barks, his exasperation only half-real, tempered with a warmth of affection Mipha can’t help but smile at. “Haven’t you got homes to go to?” - and at this they take off as one, laughing and chattering, finally and blessedly leaving Revali alone with Mipha.

She is, he notices, without her Champion’s sash, wrapped instead in a length of plain azure silk - and the jewellery that identifies her as heir to the throne of Zora’s Domain is also missing, in place of her circlet a band of bright silver shaped into an exquisitely lifelike representation of a wildflower garland, her usual necklace replaced by a fine silver chain bearing a modest pendant, an opal set in silver, that sits at her breastbone. She looks - ordinary, and Revali imagines he must, too, out of his Champion’s regalia: a Rito warrior, nothing more or less.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, and Mipha laughs, a river flowing on its way, clear and bright.

“I’m here to see you,” she answers, looking amused, eyes and teeth glinting in the afternoon’s last light. “That is allowed, isn’t it?”

“Of course.” Revali turns back towards the lodge, motioning for Mipha to follow and doing his best to ignore the way his insides twist anxiously and his pulse quickens in his throat. “But you’re going to get cold standing out here.”

“I’m more resilient than I look,” Mipha says lightly, and Revali recalls having witnessed her take on a Guardian corrupted by the Calamity’s influence, snaring a wriggling leg in the teeth of her trident and tearing it from the body with force enough to pitch the thing onto its back, its single eye pointing uselessly upwards for the few moments it had taken Mipha to dart around to its side and plunge her trident into it with all of her not inconsiderable strength, eyes wild and teeth bared.

“I know,” he replies, sincere, turning his head to look at her and struck by the sight of their contrasting tracks in the snow, the neat, compact impressions left by Mipha’s webbed feet tiny in comparison to his own three-taloned prints, long and narrow.

Inside the lodge, sheltered from the wind and snow, Revali settles on a large flat cushion embroidered in vivid geometric patterns, one of several left out beside the brazier at the room’s centre. Drawing his feathered edge from its sheath at his waist, he disturbs the firewood with the point of the blade, coaxing a few uncertain flames from the embers left burning low.

“You were at a loose end, then, I take it?” he asks, as Mipha crosses the room to join him beside the fire. “You don’t have, I don’t know, a kingdom to help run or anything like that?”

Revali’s tone is light, kept carefully and deliberately so, and if Mipha didn’t know him as she does she might think the question of as little consequence as he endeavours to make it sound. But she does know him, and she can hear, not quite concealed by his practiced performance of indifference, a fear, an insecurity he can’t hide, not from her, a plea for her not to cast him aside without a shared purpose and the threat of the Calamity to tie them together, and it makes her heart ache.

Perhaps it’s her fault for not coming here sooner. Perhaps it’s his, some unhelpful part of her thinks, for closing himself off from every chance at peace the way he does - although she’d hardly been surprised to see Vah Medoh turn and depart for Hebra as the last of the Calamity had fragmented and dispersed, consumed in a ferocious blaze of gold, and not to have heard from him since; it is, after all, why she’s here now.

But it does no good to apportion blame, and it’s difficult to believe that anything that means anything can have changed between them in the last six weeks; not after they’ve faced what should have been their end together, and prevailed.

“I do, as it happens,” she replies evenly, smiling serenely as she settles beside him, almost close enough to touch. “But my father can spare me for a while.”

“Oh?” Revali withdraws his blade from the fire, the flames starting to leap higher, and sets it aside. “Staying for a while, are you? How very kind of you to inform me.”

Mipha turns her face to him, lovely in the firelight, her jewellery and her scales shining silver and gold.

“If you don’t want me here, I’ll go,” she says, light and teasing, and Revali shakes his head, his smile mirroring hers, placated by the ease with which they fall back into their familiar accord, affectionate and playful, and he reflects that he never would have expected to find such companionship with Mipha, of all people; had been surprised, delighted, even, to discover the sharpness of mind and subtle, adroit sense of humour behind her gracious and conciliatory exterior.

“I am nothing if not hospitable,” he declares loftily, the statement accompanied by a dramatic, sweeping flourish of his wings. “Stay for as long as you wish -” _a month, a year, the rest of our lives_ \- “seeing as you’re here now in any case.”

These last few words are delivered with feigned displeasure and a sly, roguish look, and the laughter in Mipha’s voice finally overflows, a playful push from her sending Revali to lie on his back, Mipha following to lie beside him, her back to the fire.

“I’ve missed you,” she says softly, reaching a hand up to stroke his crest, admiring the way his feathers shine in the firelight, bright and lustrous.

Revali pulls her closer and wraps her in his wings, overwhelmed with the desire, the need to have her close, and she fits there perfectly, taking her hand from his crest to bring her arm around his waist as her other hand moves to the nape of his neck, her head tucked beneath his beak.

“Mipha -” he starts, suddenly no longer afraid, reassured by the weight, the physicality of her, lean muscle and hard scale, the fate he’d been so certain awaited them seeming now an irrational thing to have feared, and Mipha smiles against his neck.

“I know,” she says, nestling into the luxuriant warmth of his feathers, withdrawing her arm from around his waist to rest her hand at the base of his throat and feel his heart flit beneath his breast, vital and urgent.

“Well?” Revali prompts eventually, and Mipha realises she’s been silent for some time now, lulled almost to sleep by the gentle heat he has her enfolded in and by his familiar and comforting scent, preen oil and pine tar, earthy and resinous, and she pulls reluctantly away from him to find him looking at her restlessly, the green of his eyes more intense, more beautiful than she remembers.

“Do you need me to say it?” she asks, amused, tracing a fingertip along the curve of his beak, and it strikes Revali that he doesn’t, at least not now; that there are years, decades, ahead of them in which he might hear the words from her.

“No,” he replies, his voice betraying something of his surprise at the admission, and this earns him a radiant smile, rows of sharp teeth glinting in the half-light of the evening’s onset.

Mipha pushes herself up onto an elbow, weaves her free hand into Revali’s crest again, brings her face close to his.

“I love you,” she whispers anyway, and Revali nuzzles at her jaw, a sweet, low trill escaping him as Mipha turns her face to kiss him, pressing her mouth to the corner of his beak and then to the apex of his throat.

“So.” Revali pulls back to look at her, almost shy. “What happens now?”

Mipha smiles, caresses his cheek. “What would you like to happen now?”

Revali opens his beak to answer the question with any one of a hundred others - and then closes it, realising, on seeing amusement spark again in Mipha’s eyes, that he’s overthinking things: it’s been six weeks, six weeks that have felt like six years, and there is really only one answer to the question he was asked.

Revali sits up, his legs tucked under him and his hands on Mipha’s waist, she moving with him, draws his beak along her jaw, nips at her temporal fins, and this time when she kisses him he opens his beak a fraction to let her brush his strange, rough tongue with hers. Mipha straddles him, her arms draping around his neck, and he pulls her closer, one hand at the small of her back while the other slips beneath her sash to trace the elegant curve of her spine, brushing her scales backwards to feel them catch on the barbs of his feathers, and he sighs against her cheek.

“Here?” Mipha asks, her amber eyes alight. “Really?” - but she makes no move to separate herself from him, only smiles fondly and runs a hand through his braids.

Revali looks past her, out at the darkening sky. Surely by now the other Rito are used to him spending his nights at the Flight Range in preference to returning to his roost of an evening; he can’t imagine his absence from the village is likely to cause any concern, nor that anyone will come out here looking for him in this weather, the drifting snow now falling faster, obscuring anything more than a few feet from the lodge from view, the world reduced to Mipha, Revali and the warmth of their fire, sure and bright.

Besides which, he doesn’t think he could find it in himself to care if the Elder himself were to walk in on them.

“I’ve missed you,” he offers by way of explanation, and Mipha laughs, takes her hands from his braids.

“Show me,” she whispers, pressing closer to him, one hand moving to the nape of his neck while the other strokes the underside of his beak, and what else can he do but obey?

Revali’s hands move to the delicate silver pin holding Mipha’s sash in place, deftly flicking open the clasp while she works at the fastenings of his cuirass, the quick work she makes of stripping it from him somehow emotive, bringing to mind the way, the first few times they’d done this, she’d fought endlessly with the unfamiliar workings of his armour, so unlike anything ever made or worn by any Zora, and he likewise with the tiny and delicate clasps of her jewellery, designed without thought to their operation by the feathered hands of a Rito; the way, over time, it had all become second nature, the complexities of one another’s attire as routine and as ordinary as their own.

Revali sets the pin aside, his gaze tracking the movement of Mipha’s sash as it slides from her shoulder to rest at her elbow, and he helps it the rest of the way, slow and purposeful, admiring the way the fine fabric glides over her scales.

Mipha pulls at Revali’s unfastened cuirass and he wriggles out of it, and she turns it over in her hands once, twice, contemplating its shape, the shape she will need, more or less, to recreate, setting it down on her loosely furled sash as Revali removes her circlet, his beak brushing her neck as he lowers his head to release the clasp of her necklace, her arms around his waist as she pulls at the lacing of his fauld with deft fingers. Undone, it joins the rest of their clothing, and Mipha presses herself flush with Revali again, presses herself into his feathers to feel the warmth radiating from him, takes his face in her hands as his go to her waist.

“I didn’t think…” Revali starts, and then falls silent, unsure of what exactly it is he’s trying to say to her. “I didn’t - I never expected -”

“I know,” Mipha says softly, one hand brushing tenderly over Revali’s cheek, and he leans into her touch, eyes closing momentarily, lifting his hands from her waist to brush his primaries over her closed gill-slits - and they flare at the touch, opening for him to stroke their soft undersides.

“Vali,” Mipha breathes, squirming against him, one hand in his braids while the other slips between their bodies to tease his cock from his slit, pressing a kiss to the underside of his beak as she trails her fingertips through the soft down between his legs, damp with his arousal, and when she pushes them gently into his slick opening he chirps and trills like some anxious fledgling, grasping her firmly by the waist and rolling his hips, desperate for contact; distantly, he thinks that probably he ought to be embarrassed, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“Oh,” Mipha purrs, pleased, smiling against Revali’s cheek as she pushes in deeper, working him open, “you _have_ missed me,” - and he moans as his cock pushes free of its sheath and into her hand, and she strokes him eagerly, her eyes gleaming and her gill-slits twitching as her breathing quickens and turns shallow.

“Please,” Revali gasps, thrusting into her hand, and Mipha has never seen him more beautiful: beak open, panting, his head thrown back and his eyes closed in bliss, feathers bristling slightly, resplendent in the firelight. “Please - Mipha -”

Mipha knows what he’s asking, and she moves her hands to his waist and shoulder to push him gently onto his back, Revali moaning softly in complaint at the loss of contact, Mipha moving with him as she guides him to lie beneath her, his hands on her waist as she aligns her body with his. Revali keeps still for her as best he can, but can’t help but squirm at the brush of his slick length against the inside of her thigh, and when she sighs softly and presses forward, lifting a hand to guide him to her open fold, wet and wanting, he gives her a sly, provocative sort of look, as though he’s pleased with himself; pleased with them both.

Mipha moves slowly and Revali moves with her, distracted by the sight of her: so lovely it almost hurts to look at her, so lovely he can’t look away, luminous, the firelight catching on her scales as she moves, fluid and graceful, her lips moving on soundless words between every gasp, every moan, and when her gaze meets his she smiles at him so warmly, so tenderly that his breath catches in his throat and he has to close his eyes at last.

Mipha sighs and rolls her hips, her fingertips tracing slow paths through the soft down of Revali’s breast and midsection, as lost in him as he is in her, increasing her pace when he starts to gasp and squirm under her and his grip on her waist tightens; they’ve done this enough by now that she can read his responses without having to try, knows almost instinctively when to speed up, when to slow down, the comfortable rhythm they fall into familiar and lovely.

Revali lets himself be swept under by the tide of passionate desire they’ve built together, awash in pleasure, eyes closed, each breath he gasps out more desperate than the last, until an impatient sound from Mipha makes him remember himself - and he looks up at her to see a familiar, wordless question in her eyes, increasingly wild as the tip of her tongue darts briefly from her mouth and the points of her claws press into his shoulders, and in reply he arches his back, exposing his throat, trilling softly in anticipation.

Mipha presses forward to lie flush with him, slides one hand under his shoulder and with the other caresses his cheek, trailing open-mouthed kisses along his throat until her teeth find their usual place where his neck and shoulder meet, and it’s all he can do to keep his composure and his rhythm as she bites into him with a fervent moan he feels more than hears, a hand on her caudal keel to keep her there as he gasps feverishly up at the ceiling, soft, impassioned oaths and Mipha’s name, his other hand at the small of her back and pressing her closer, closer, as though even now, joined as completely as they can be, it’s not enough.

Mipha squirms and he releases her, and she pushes herself up onto her hands, one either side of his chest, as she rolls her hips and licks at the blood staining her lower lip, breathing hard, chest heaving and gills flaring wildly.

“Harder,” she gasps, writhing desperately against Revali, her expression so open, so vulnerable, that it leaves him breathless, and he rolls them swiftly and carefully over, pressing her into the cushion at her back as her legs wrap around his waist and she threads her fingers into his braids, moaning and squealing as he nuzzles at her jaw, her throat, every nerve in her body singing with delight as she grasps blindly at his shoulders, his braids, his crest - and then he’s watching as she comes blissfully apart, tightening sharply around him, tense as a drawn bowstring.

“ _Vali_ ,” she squeals, squirming under him, back arched and head thrown back, eyes closed, “Goddess, Vali -” and she pulls him over the precipice with her, both of them falling together, weightless, gasping and trembling against one another before they finally go still.

When he remembers how to move again, Revali pushes himself up onto his hands, Mipha reaching a lazy hand up to stroke his face as he rolls stiffly onto his side, facing the brazier with Mipha between him and the fire, and he pulls her close to him, every curve, every angle of her body precious and familiar.

“I love you,” he says softly, but she’s asleep, a look of serene contentment on her face, nestled against Revali and enfolded in his wings. No matter; he’ll tell her tomorrow, and all the days after.

Revali lies there awake for a few minutes more, feels Mipha breathe against his neck, watches the flames leap and dance in the brazier, vivid sparks flying heavenward before disappearing from existence - and then lets himself drift away into sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> happy new year from one miphvali lover to another!! ♥ i hope 2021 is kind to you... and i hope you liked this :3


End file.
